Where Members Live Before You Pick the City: What Six Studies and Guides Say About Distance, Attendance and Venue Signs

Attendance had fallen over the past five years at chapter, regional and annual meetings, according to a 2010 University of Central Florida survey of members of four associations, two trade and two medical. Of the 5,591 members across those four associations, 902 responded and 885 surveys were usable. That is the closest benchmark among the six sources for the choice an events director makes every year: which city hosts the annual meeting, whether a regional meeting is worth adding, and how the venue gets laid out and signed. No source we read studied chapter coverage, a venue floor-plan app or wayfinding at an association event, and none of the six covers map design, meaning scale, a you-are-here marker or what a venue map should show.

What the 885 members said, and what they were never asked

The authors of that survey found the relevance of the program ranked first among influences on attendance at all three levels. Meeting cost ranked third for regional and annual meetings and fourth for chapter meetings, and meeting cost was among the factors that 31.6 percent of the 885 said would increase their attendance at chapter meetings, 40.1 percent at regional meetings and 63.2 percent at annual meetings. Respondents’ own reported attendance fell between 2002 and 2006 from 764 to 676 at chapter meetings, from 838 to 791 at regional meetings and from 831 to 789 at annual meetings. In the paper’s Table 4, the share of respondents saying each factor would raise attendance was higher for regional than for chapter meetings on every factor except program relevance (64.0 against 65.3 percent), and highest for annual meetings on every factor except one session length (1 to 2 days). Because chapter meetings are typically closer to members’ homes, the authors write that the results suggest the importance of these factors increases as distance to the meeting increases. The survey did not measure distance, so that link is their inference. The sample was a convenience sample of four associations, which the authors list as a limitation.

One more result matters to anyone planning chapters as a feeder: 63.3 percent said attending a chapter or regional meeting had no influence on whether they attended the annual meeting.

Three studies of distance, three different settings

The abstract of a 2004 article on one regional association, the Southern Criminal Justice Association, reports that its 1998 to 2003 annual meeting sites requiring greater travel had lower attendance and did not capture new members. It also reports that strong offerings and tourist attractions can offset the drawback of longer travel and that a core group of members came wherever the meeting was held. We read only the abstract, and the page does not describe the study’s methods.

A 2024 article on the European Geosciences Union General Assembly, written at universities in Brazil and Canada, correlated attendance for 2005 to 2024 with distance, income and population, country by country. It reports that national income was the primary determinant, that distance mattered to a lesser extent with correlations typically around 0.35, and that countries about 7500 kilometers away differed sharply, with India and central African nations underrepresented and Canada overrepresented. It covers countries rather than members, and the authors used population as a proxy because member counts by country were not available.

A 2011 modelling article from the University of North Texas and a research center in Santa Barbara used nine years of attendance records from two scientific societies. It put member addresses into a mapping system, calculated round-trip distances to the host city and compared national meetings with an alternating schedule of national and regional ones. Its model estimated that per-attendee travel emissions for a national meeting in Memphis would be 30 percent lower than for one in San Jose, and that the alternating schedule could cut carbon emissions by an average of 49 to 74 percent once the full cost of meetings with international participation was counted (the page’s abstract says up to 73 percent; the full text gives the average). The model measures carbon, not attendance, rests on past attendance records and not turnout at a new meeting, could not place 3 to 10 percent of addresses on the map, and the authors write that each organization will need to examine the distribution of its own membership.

What this means for the person choosing a city

In our reading, the three agree on little beyond this: distance matters to some degree and differs by host city, so a member’s address tells a planner something. They do not support forecasting attendance from distance. The association study is abstract only and 22 years old, the geoscience study found income mattered more, and the survey found program relevance outranked everything else. The settings also differ: a regional criminal justice association, a European geoscience union, ecology and geography societies, and two trade and two medical associations. The 2004, 2010 and 2011 sources are between 15 and 22 years old.

The venue half: a federal sign guide and a draft note

The U.S. Access Board’s guide to the ADA Standards, a federal agency guide, covers visual requirements for informational and directional signs and visual and tactile requirements for signs naming permanent rooms and spaces. It exempts temporary signs posted for 7 days or less from those visual and tactile requirements, says the Standards specify no minimum contrast, notes that textured or variated backgrounds can reduce contrast and compromise readability, and ties minimum character height to mounting height and viewing distance. We read nothing in it that applies those rules to temporary event signs.

A W3C draft Group Note dated 5 February 2026, which W3C says its Members have not endorsed, lists needs of people who require cognitive accessibility support when finding their way inside buildings such as museums, hospitals and airports. Among them are reviewing a destination’s room number several times, difficulty sorting relevant details on a cluttered interface, a route given only as written text, trouble understanding maps, and trouble estimating distances given in meters or feet. Neither document tests a venue map.

Three checks to run before the city and the signs are fixed

These are our suggestions, built on the sources above and untested at an association.

1. List members by home area and add up round-trip distance to each candidate city, as the 2011 model did, treating the totals as travel burden and not as a forecast; the chapter map tutorial shows how to draw members as counts instead of pins.
2. Compare cities with the program held constant, since program relevance led every influence in the survey, and ask a few regulars what would keep them coming, because the 2004 abstract reports a core group that attends anywhere.
3. Give directions in more than one form, such as a room number repeated on each sign plus a landmark, keep signs uncluttered and high in contrast, and ask someone who has never visited to find a room from the signs alone; if you publish a 3D venue view, the venue scan tutorial covers keeping the file small.